"Clay," Ben called in a strained voice, "take 'er."

  Ferguson's fingers were already in position. "You all right, Ben?" he asked anxiously.

  "Think I dislocated a neck vertebra," Ben replied. "I can't move my head. Go get 'em, kid."

  "Try not to move your head at all, Ben," Kelly called from her cocoon in the dispensary. "I'll be there the minute we slow down."

  A half mile ahead, the fugitive car plowed along the bottom of the gentle draw in a cloud of snow, trying to fight its way up the opposite slope and onto the eastbound thruway.

  But the Travelaire was never designed for driving on anything but a modern superhighway. Car 56 slammed through the snow and down to the bottom of the draw. A quarter of a mile ahead of the fugitives, the first of the four roadblock units came plowing over the rise.

  The car's speed dropped quickly to under a hundred and the cocoons were again retracted. Ben slumped forward in his seat and caught himself. He eased back with a gasp of pain, his head held rigidly straight. Almost the instant he started to straighten up, Kelly flung herself through the cab door. She clasped his forehead and held his head against the back of the control seat.

  Suddenly, the fugitive car spun sideways, bogged in the wet snow and muddy ground beneath and stopped. Clay bore down on it and was about two hundred yards away when the canopy of the other vehicle popped open and a sheet of automatic weapons fire raked the patrol car. Only the low angle of the sedan and the nearness of the bulky patrol car saved the troopers. Explosive bullets smashed into the patrol car canopy and sent shards of plastiglass showering down on the trio.

  An instant later, the bow cannon of the first of the cut-off patrol units opened fire. An ugly, yellow-red blossom of smoke and fire erupted from the front of the Travelaire and it burst into flames. A second later, the figure of a man staggered out of the burning car, clothes and hair aflame. He took four plunging steps and then fell face down in the snow. The car burned and crackled and a thick funereal pyre of oily, black smoke billowed into the gray sky. It was snowing heavily now, and before the troopers could dismount and plow to the fallen man, a thin layer of snow covered his burned body.

  * * *

  An hour later, Car 56 was again on NAT 26-West, this time heading for Wichita barracks and needed repairs. In the dispensary, Ben Martin was stretched out on a hospital bunk with a traction brace around his neck and a copper-haired medical-surgical patrolwoman fussing over him.

  In the cab, Clay peered through the now almost-blinding blizzard that whirled and skirled thick snow across the thruway. Traffic densities were virtually zero despite the efforts of the dragonlike snow-burners trying to keep the roadways clear. The young trooper shivered despite the heavy jacket over his coveralls. Wind whistled through the shell holes in Beulah's canopy and snow sifted and drifted against the back bulkhead.

  The cab communications system had been smashed by the gunfire and Clay wore his work helmet both for communications and warmth.

  The door to the galley cracked open and Kelly stuck her head in. "How much farther, Clay?" she asked.

  "We should be in the barracks in about twenty minutes," the shivering trooper replied.

  "I'll fix you a cup of hot coffee," Kelly said. "You look like you need it."

  Over the helmet intercom Clay heard her shoving things around in the galley. "My heavens, but this place is a mess," she exclaimed. "I can't even find the coffee bin. That steeplechase driving has got to stop." She paused.

  "Clay," she called out, "Have you been drinking in here? It smells like a brewery."

  Clay raised mournful eyes to the shattered canopy above him. "My cooking wine," he sighed.

  A ROSE FOR ECCLESIASTES

  Roger Zelazny

  I

  I was busy translating one of my _Madrigals Macabre_ into Martian on the morning I was found acceptable. The intercom had buzzed briefly, and I dropped my pencil and flipped on the toggle in a single motion.

  "Mister G," piped Morton's youthful contralto, "the old man says I should `get hold of that damned conceited rhymer` right away, and send him to his cabin. Since there's only one damned conceited rhymer..."

  "Let not ambition mock thy useful toil." I cut him off.

  So, the Martians had finally made up their minds! I knocked an inch and a half of ash from a smoldering butt, and took my first drag since I had lit it. The entire month's anticipation tried hard to crowd itself into the moment, but could not quite make it. I was frightened to walk those forty feet and hear Emory say the words I already knew he would say; and that feeling elbowed the other one into the background.

  So I finished the stanza I was translating before I got up.

  It took only a moment to reach Emory's door. I knocked twice and opened it, just as he growled, "Come in."

  "You wanted to see me?" I sat down quickly to save him the trouble of offering me a seat.

  "That was fast. What did you do, run?"

  I regarded his paternal discontent:

  _Little fatty flecks beneath pale eyes, thinning hair, and an Irish nose; a voice a decibel louder than anyone else's....._

  Hamlet to Claudius: "I was working."

  "Hah!" he snorted. "Come off it. No one's ever seen you do any of that stuff."

  I shrugged my shoulders and started to rise.

  "If that's what you called me down here--"

  "Sit down!"

  He stood up. He walked around his desk. He hovered above me and glared down. (A hard trick, even when I'm in a low chair.)

  "You are undoubtably the most antagonistic bastard I've ever had to work with!" he bellowed, like a belly-stung buffalo. "Why the hell don't you act like a human being sometime and surprise everybody? I'm willing to admit you're smart, maybe even a genius, but--oh, hell!" He made a heaving gesture with both hands and walked back to his chair.

  "Betty has finally talked them into letting you go in." His voice was normal again. "They'll receive you this afternoon. Draw one of the jeepsters after lunch, and get down there."

  "Okay," I said.

  "That's all, then."

  I nodded, got to my feet. My hand was on the doorknob when he said:

  "I don't have to tell you how important this is. Don't treat them the way you treat us."

  I closed the door behind me.

  I don't remember what I had for lunch. I was nervous, but I knew instinctively that I wouldn't muff it. My Boston publishers expected a Martian Idyll, or at least a Saint-Exupery job on space flight. The National Science Association wanted a complete report on the Rise and Fall of the Martian Empire.

  They would both be pleased. I knew.

  That's the reason everyone is jealous--why they hate me. I always come through, and I can come through better than anyone else.

  I shoveled in a final anthill of slop, and made my way to our car barn. I drew one jeepster and headed it toward Tirellian.

  Flames of sand, lousy with iron oxide, set fire to the buggy.

  They swarmed over the open top and bit through my scarf; they set to work pitting my goggles.

  The jeepster, swaying and panting like a little donkey I once rode through the Himalayas, kept kicking me in the seat of the pants. The Mountains of Tirellian shuffled their feet and moved toward me at a cockeyed angle.

  Suddenly I was heading uphill, and I shifted gears to accommodate the engine's braying. Not like Gobi, not like the Great Southwestern Desert, I mused. Just red, just dead...without even a cactus.

  I reached the crest of the hill, but I had raised too much dust to see what was ahead. It didn't matter, though; I have a head full of maps. I bore to the left and downhill, adjusting the throttle. A crosswind and solid ground beat down the fires. I felt like Ulysses in Malebolge--with a terza-rima speech in one hand and an eye out for Dante.

  I rounded a rock pagoda and arrived.

  Betty waved as I crunched to a halt, then jumped down.

  "Hi," I choked, unwinding my scarf and shaking out a pound and a half of grit. "Like, where do I go and who do I see?"

  She permitted herself a brief Germanic giggle--more at my starting a sentence with "like" than at my discomfort--then she started talking.

  (She is a top linguist, so a word from the Village Idiom still tickles her!)

  I appreciate her precise, furry talk; informational, and all that.

  I had enough in the way of social pleasantries before me to last at least the rest of my life. I looked at her chocolate-bar eyes and perfect teeth, at her sun-bleached hair, close-cropped to the head (I hate blondes!), and decided that she was in love with me.

  "Mr. Gallinger, the Matriarch is waiting inside for you to be introduced. She has consented to open the Temple records for your study." She paused here to pat her hair and squirm a little. Did my gaze make her nervous?

  "They are religious documents, as well as their only history," she continued, "sort of like the Mahabharata. She expects you to observe certain rituals in handling them, like repeating the sacred words when you turn pages--she will teach you the system."

  I nodded quickly, several times.

  "Fine, let's go in."

  "Uh--" She paused. "Do not forget their Eleven Forms of Politeness and Degree. They take matters of form quite seriously--and do not get into any discussions over the equality of the sexes--"

  "I know all about their taboos," I broke in. "Don't worry. I've lived in the Orient, remember?"

  She dropped her eyes and seized my hand. I almost jerked it away.

  "It will look better if I enter leading you."

  I swallowed my comments, and followed her, like Samson in Gaza.

  Inside, my last thought met with a strange correspondence. The Matriarch's quarters were a rather abstract version of what I might imagine the tents of the tribes of Israel to have been like.

  Abstract, I say, because it was all frescoed brick, peaked like a huge tent, with animal-skin representations like gray-blue scars, that looked as if they had been laid on the walls with a palette knife.

  The Matriarch, M'Cwyie, was short, white-haired, fifty-ish, and dressed like a queen. With her rainbow of voluminous skirts she looked like an inverted punch bowl set atop a cushion.

  Accepting my obeisances, she regarded me as an owl might a rabbit.

  The lids of those blank, black eyes jumped upwards as she discovered my perfect accent. --The tape recorder Betty had carried on her interviews had done its part, and I knew the language reports from the first two expeditions, verbatim. I'm all hell when it comes to picking up accents.

  "You are the poet?"

  "Yes," I replied.

  "Recite one of your poems, please."

  "I'm sorry, but nothing short of a thorough translating job would do justice to your language and my poetry, and I don't know enough of your language yet."

  "Oh?"

  "But I've been making such translations for my own amusement, as an exercise in grammar," I continued. "I'd be honored to bring a few of them along one of the times that I come here."

  "Yes. Do so."

  Score one for me!

  She turned to Betty.

  "You may go now."

  Betty muttered the parting formalities, gave me a strange sideways look, and was gone. She apparently had expected to stay and "assist" me. She wanted a piece of the glory, like everyone else. But I was the Schliemann at this Troy, and there would be only one name on the Association report!

  M'Cwyie rose, and I noticed that she gained very little height by standing. But then I'm six-six and look like a poplar in October; thin, bright red on top, and towering above everyone else.

  "Our records are very, very old," she began. "Betty says that your word for that age is `millennia.`"

  I nodded appreciatively.

  "I'm very anxious to see them."

  "They are not here. We will have to go into the Temple--they may not be removed."

  I was suddenly wary.

  "You have no objections to my copying them, do you?"

  "No. I see that you respect them, or your desire would not be so great."

  "Excellent."

  She seemed amused. I asked her what was so funny.

  "The High Tongue may not be so easy for a foreigner to learn."

  It came through fast.

  No one on the first expedition had gotten this close. I had had no way of knowing that this was a double-language deal--a classical as well as a vulgar. I knew some of their Prakrit, now I had to learn all their Sanskrit.

  "Ouch, and damn!"

  "Pardon, please?"

  "It's non-translatable, M'Cwyie. But imagine yourself having to learn the High Tongue in a hurry, and you can guess at the sentiment."

  She seemed amused again, and told me to remove my shoes.

  She guided me through an alcove...

  ...and into a burst of Byzantine brilliance!

  No Earthman had ever been in this room before, or I would have heard about it. Carter, the first expedition's linguist, with the help of one Mary Allen, M.D., had learned all the grammar and vocabulary that I knew while sitting cross-legged in the antechamber.

  We had had no idea this existed. Greedily, I cast my eyes about.

  A highly sophisticated system of esthetics lay behind the decor. We would have to revise our entire estimation of Martian culture.

  For one thing, the ceiling was vaulted and corbeled; for another, there were side-columns with reverse flutings; for another--oh hell!

  The place was big. Posh. You could never have guessed it from the shaggy outsides.

  I bent forward to study the gilt filigree on a ceremonial table.

  M'Cwyie seemed a bit smug at my intentness, but I'd still have hated to play poker with her.

  The table was loaded with books.

  With my toe, I traced a mosaic on the floor.

  "Is your entire city within this one building?"

  "Yes, it goes far back into the mountain."

  "I see," I said, seeing nothing.

  I couldn't ask her for a conducted tour, yet.

  She moved to a small stool by the table.

  "Shall we begin your friendship with the High Tongue?"

  I was trying to photograph the hall with my eyes, knowing I would have to get a camera in here, somehow, sooner or later. I tore my gaze from a statuette and nodded, hard.

  "Yes, introduce me."

  I sat down.

  For the next three weeks alphabet-bugs chased each other behind my eyelids whenever I tried to sleep. The sky was an unclouded pool of turquoise that rippled calligraphies whenever I swept my eyes across it. I drank quarts of coffee while I worked and mixed cocktails of Benzedrine and champagne for my coffee breaks.

  M'Cwyie tutored me two hours every morning, and occasionally for another two in the evening. I spent an additional fourteen hours a day on my own, once I had gotten up sufficient momentum to go ahead alone.

  And at night the elevator of time dropped me to its bottom floors...

  I was six again, learning my Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. I was ten, sneaking peeks at the _Iliad_. When Daddy wasn't spreading hellfire brimstone, and brotherly love, he was teaching me to dig the Word, like in the original.

  Lord! There are so many originals and so _many_ words! When I was twelve I started pointing out the little differences between what he was preaching and what I was reading.

  The fundamentalist vigor of his reply brooked no debate. It was worse than any beating. I kept my mouth shut after that and learned to appreciate Old Testament poetry.

  _--Lord, I am sorry! Daddy--Sir--I am sorry! --It couldn't be! It couldn't be...._

  On the day the boy graduated from high school, with the French, German, Spanish, and Latin awards, Dad Gallinger had told his fourteen-year old, six-foot scarecrow of a son that he wanted him to enter the ministry. I remember how his son was evasive:

  "Sir," he had said, "I'd sort of like to study on my own for a year or so, and then take pre-theology courses at some liberal arts university. I feel I'm still sort of young to try a seminary, straight off."

  The Voice of God: "But you have the gift of tongues, my son. You can preach the Gospel in all the lands of Babel. You were born to be a missionary. You say you are young, but time is rushing by you like a whirlwind. Start early, and you will enjoy added years of service."

  The added years of service were so many added tails to the cat repeatedly laid on my back. I can't see his face now; I never can.

  Maybe it was because I was always afraid to look at it then.

  And years later, when he was dead, and laid out, in black, amidst bouquets, amidst weeping congregationalists, amidst prayers, red faces, handkerchiefs, hands patting your shoulders, solemn faced comforters...I looked at him and did not recognize him.

  We had met nine months before my birth, this stranger and I. He had never been cruel--stern, demanding, with contempt for everyone's shortcomings--but never cruel. He was also all that I had had of a mother. And brothers. And sisters. He had tolerated my three years at St. John's, possibly because of its name, never knowing how liberal and delightful a place it really was.

  But I never knew him, and the man atop the catafalque demanded nothing now; I was free not to preach the Word. But now I wanted to, in a different way. I wanted to preach a word that I never could have voiced while he lived.

  I did not return for my senior year in the fall. I had a small inheritance coming, and a bit of trouble getting control of it, since I was still under eighteen. But I managed.

  It was Greenwich Village I finally settled upon.

  Not telling any well-meaning parishioners my new address, I entered into a daily routine of writing poetry and teaching myself Japanese and Hindustani. I grew a fiery beard, drank espresso, and learned to play chess. I wanted to try a couple of the other paths to salvation.

  After that, it was two years in India with the Old Peace Corps--which broke me of my Buddhism, and gave me my _Pipes of Krishna_ lyrics and the Pulitzer they deserved.

  Then back to the States for my degree, grad work in linguistics, and more prizes.

  Then one day a ship went to Mars. The vessel settling in its New Mexico nest of fires contained a new language. --It was fantastic, exotic, and esthetically overpowering. After I had learned all there was to know about it, and written my book, I was famous in new circles:

 

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